Results show surge of support for Christopher Luxon’s centre-right party with 40% votes counted; Labour could lose Jacinda Ardern’s seat
- Tired, broke and eager for change, New Zealand expected to shift right
- Profile: Act leader David Seymour
The first results are coming in, Eva Corlett reports:
With 3% of the votes counted, the centre-right National party is ahead.
Ilam. Can centrist newcomer TOP enter Parliament?
This Christchurch seat was very deep blue for a very long time before Labour flipped it in their landslide win in 2020. If it was just flipping back to National that wouldn’t be that exciting, but there is a chance – probably a narrow one – that a newish centrist party named TOP win the seat. Ilam is the only possible route into parliament for TOP, as they aren’t polling anywhere near the 5% threshold nationally which guarantees seats in the house.
Tamaki. Is ACT strong enough to win another electorate?
This Auckland seat has been held by National since 1960 – and it isn’t in any danger of being won by Labour. But Act, the libertarian party to National’s right, have selected their deputy leader Brooke van Veldt to run in this seat, and she’s run very hard. The incumbent National MP Simon O’Connor is a hardline social conservative – he celebrated Roe v Wade being overturned – and there are suggestions that many in the community would prefer the more socially liberal Van Velden to win the seat.
Wellington Central and Rongotai. Are the Greens going to evict Labour from the capital?
At the last election the Green Party shocked the establishment by winning Auckland Central, their first victory for the party in an electorate in two decades. This time they are trying to repeat the trick across a handful of electorates, most notably this pair of Wellington seats. The capital is usually a safe haven for the Labour Party, but the Greens win huge amounts of party vote here, and have been putting a lot of effort into winning these two seats.
